To ask for home made Xmas Decoration Ideas

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I’m trying to save money and also do a bit for the environment by not going OTT this Christmas with decorations.

I have a tree and some garlands/lights donated by my Mum (who goes mad for Xmas decorating so has enough decorations for probably three houses in her own) but I have no tree decorations. I’m not too bad with arts and crafts but find myself stumped on simple decorations that I can make with the art supplies I already have at home (and in the one to two hours of brainpower I have left after my DC have gone to bed in the evenings).

I’ve looked online but the ‘simple’ decorations it suggests are either not that simple or require buying a lot more materials and that would sort of defeat the point of not buying the decorations to begin with! 😂

DH says I don’t need to worry too much as DC are only 2yo so they won’t miss not having a decorated tree, but I want to have one for them (and for me) as I managed to convince my parents and PIL to let us have this Christmas as just our little family unit at our house for the first time and want my children to look back on photos of it and know some effort was made.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. My creative brain has gone AWOL this year.

Can you make some out of salt dough? I've done that with DD yesterday. I used star shaped cutters that I already had and we're painting them this afternoon. Really really easy.

Salt dough is just flour salt and water.

We collected toilet rolls. Covered them in nice wrapping paper and tied the ends with ribbons. They look nice balanced on the tree.

Lovely! Yes those are excellent ideas, I can make little Christmas Crackers with used rolls, I’ve never made or heard of salt dough but I do like sculpting (not brilliant at it but I have star cutters and ginger bread cutters) thank you 😊 I used to be good at off the cuff decorating but since having DC I can barely put a basic card together anymore (I blame the sleep deprivation ).

Cut out snowflakes from white paper and hang from tree or make a garland from them. Also, origami baubles.

Paper chains, toilet rolls cut into strips, bent and glued together (Pinterest is your friend here), lollipop sticks glued together in a triangle and painted green with pom poms etc to make Christmas trees, paper lanterns on black paper with Roses wrappers for the 'windows'

Little boxes wrapped in pretty paper tied with ribbon, maybe decorated with a tiny cone or paper holly leaves.

Old fashioned paper chains. Easier if you've got one of those paper trimmer thingies.

Oh, remember those things they used to make with crepe paper? Strips of, folded over each other and it would stretch out to a chain type thing?

I'm getting a bit over enthused here

Also, if you have any brightly coloured yarn you could make pom poms and again either hang from tree or make a garland.

Collect pine cones. Add some string and hang. lovely, simple and natural

A few cloves in any kind of fine white net tied with ribbon looks lovely and smells Christmassy too.

Any spices clove, cinnamon etc.

We are drying oranges, painting pine cones and making salt dough decorations

Old fashioned snowflakes cut out of paper and put on the walls and windows. So simple and effective.

Painted pine cones

I've made a few book wreaths out of old books - even left them up after Christmas as they look so pretty!

Book Wreath Instructions

Google toilet roll stars. Some beautiful designs, and some simple ones.

Do you have any fabric? Plenty you can do with a little sewing and stuffing with scraps.

Any oranges? Slice thickly and put in the oven overnight, or better yet, studded with cloves before drying.

Took DS (2) to a Christmas craft afternoon at nursery this week. We made salt dough decorations) very simple to make. Roll out, cut into shapes and paint/add glitter. Also with lolly sticks, glue and paint you can make Christmas trees. You can also make these into photo frames for gifts.

We use to paint toilet roll tubes as DC and add tinsel, some of those are over 40 years old on Mam's tree.
Those wreaths look great.

Pine cones covered in PVA and glitter :-)

Glue together twigs to make a nest, egg to make a robin body then make a head out of card and colour in feathers and tummy

I have done some paper snowflakes, forgot about chains though and have been trying to find something to do with the coloured card I’ve had knocking about for roughly 2 years now! Excellent- I’ll try the 3D baubles from paper but that’s a bit outside of my skill zone but I’ll see what I can turn out 😁 thank you, tonight is going to be easy snipping away with scissors and probably getting annoyed at my clumsy fingers, proper Christmas spirit

If you have any Foil cooking trays, the base is good for cutting out 'silver' stars for branches & as tree topper: loop cotton thread thru with needle to hang. Pine cones sprayed silver. I couldn't find blue bows I liked, they were all a bit cheap looking so I bought 2m turquoise organza satin edge ribbon for £2 on Ebay to make my own & just tie them on, no wires. (70's Xmas memories)!

These folded paper stars are pretty easy to make. I made some from brown parcel paper last year

www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com/5-pointed-origami-star.html

Cut cheap white bread into Christmas shapes, leave to get hard, maybe in a low oven, or on a window ledge, then paint and hang up.

Not ‘easy’, don’t know where that autocorrect came from it was meant to read “me snipping away”!

Go for a walk in nearby woods and collect pine cones. Spray with snow/glitter. Job done.

There’s some really pretty paper houses that look great on Pinterest.